the horns of ames

Books

So I was in Borders browsing through the Christianity section and came across some good stuff. First of all, John MacArthur has a book called "Fools Gold" which looked interesting. I read his section on Contemporary Worship in the church. It was mainly focused on the content (lyrics) of the songs and didn't go into the style. He was expressing his concern that the newer songs talk more about personal feelings and play on your emotions too much, while the older hymns (keep in mind there hasn't been a hymn written and widely adopted since 1940) contain a lot of mentally stimulating verses, which he feels is Scriptural.

Upon writing this, I discovered that there is actually a Baptist Organization that thinks MacArthur is a Hyper Calvinist. Check out the article: http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/warning-johnmacarthur.html Based on the way it is written, I'd say someone has a personal vendetta and some of the comments are completely unfounded (like "MacArthur is Hyper Calvanist.") John MacArthur said on a radio program "But universalism or annihilationism or hyper-Calvinism or Arminianism are not biblical responses to this very, very important issue of God loving the world." People also accuse him of being a Dispensationalist like it's a bad thing (supporting article here: http://www.biblebb.com/files/macqa/1301-N-6.htm)

Ok, I digress. The real reason for my post was to let you know about the two books I actually ended up with. Ok, I'm a cheapskate, so I noted the books I liked and went home and ordered them from BAMM.com, saving me $14. :-) I bought RC Sproul's "Now That's a Good Question" book. I didn't like how few supporting Scriptural verses were in the book, but I did like how much common sense was used to address the questions. My challenge will be to not just accept his answers that don't have Scriptural emphasis, and make sure they are sound answers and not just his opinion.

The second book I bought was "Church History in Plain Language" by Bruce Shelley. This looked like an interesting read. I find myself interested in figuring out how we got to the point we're at today, so this should satisfy some of that curiosity.

Maybe I'll use this blog as a diary of thoughts as I read through some of these books. Perhaps it will spark interest in someone else. I'm going to give these blogs a Category of "Devotions" so you can easily sort the blogs and just see the ones related to my comments from my devotions. I can already promise I won't have comments for every day, but I hope to post often...

posted by Aaron @ www.HornIT.net @ 10:21 AM